In his book, an old book (but I’m an old guy), Thomas Szaz questions the basis of psychiatry. Either foolhardy or courageous, he makes a brilliant point. His premise is: if hysteria (the first recognized psychiatric disorder) is not a physical disease, why is it treated like one? Szaz does a masterful job of explaining the difference.
Charcot, Freud, and others diagnosed and treated mental illness as a physical disorder when there is no evidence to prove that it is one. In this way, medicine usurped social and relational problems into the realm of physical diseases. In doing so, they mimicked Abraham Maslow’s quote (1966), "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."
What does this mean to treatment? Treatment becomes a physical issue such as ice baths, insulin injections, surgery, or today, psychotropic medication. And despite the obvious, that the displayed behavior patterns were the diagnosis, treatment remains medical.
Of course, Szaz is right. It never changed psychiatric thinking but really twisted their knickers. So much so, I found an article within the last year attacking him again, using the same logic he defeated in his book.
Today, we research each function of the brain. It makes psychology a biochemical process, but think, does depression create biochemistry or does biochemistry create depression, or does each affect the other in a way that involves mind. We understand the entire genome and brain structure, but we have yet to formulate a consistent theory of function, a theory of pattern for how a person works, but we are close.
The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (1961). Available on Amazon.